Tom AustinAndy just blogged on material that relates to the excellent book he and Erik Brynjolfsson wrote last year, “Race Against The Machine“. Read the blog. Then read the book — it’s short and to the point (and reflects many of my much less widely read musings of the last few years).
The video of “Big Dog” in his post is entertaining but the fundamental message is sobering. Technology is destroying jobs. Some of them — good riddance. But technology’s also moving up the value chain. And the deep issue here to me is how does society adapt?
Back in High School in the early 60′s, the claim was we’d all work only 15 hours a week by now — and take a few months off every year. Work would be automated, right? Well, now we’re getting closer to that in a mathematical way. How does society adjust? Pay everyone to work only, on average, 15 hours a week? I don’t think so. So how are our institutions going to change?
If they don’t change, and more and more money goes to the top few percent of the population, we’re going to see massive social strife right here in the US.
What can we do to redress this? Can we raise people’s game enough to raise their worth enough to offset this incomes shift?
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